Graduating seniors are a species of their own.

We're tired. Tired of scholarly academics talking way over our heads, tired of general education courses that rehash our 9th grade classes, tired of paying inflated prices to live in closets, tired of this tired old town.

Yet we're nervous. Nervous about starting a job, about renting a real apartment, about paying real bills, about figuring out how to live without the friends who have defined the last four years of our lives.

It's funny. When you get a job, everybody acts like all of the sudden your life has actually begun. "Finally, you're a productive member of society," they'll say.

Then, in the next breath, "Although you'll never have as much fun as you did in college." Both of which are, no offense to the many fine people I know who've expressed these thoughts, the most ridiculous sentiments I've heard in my entire life.

Little did I know that I was a scourge to America as I fueled the large business known as Penn State by paying ever-increasing tuition costs. And call me ungrateful, but I never stopped to ruminate on the glory of eating Taco Bell four nights in a row while subsisting on Mountain Dew to write a 10 page essay on the significance of brown hair in all of Shakespeare's plays, poems, personal diary entries and bathroom scribblings on the walls of English pubs.

College was life like all the other life I've lived and probably will live. There was good and there was bad. Much of it was simple, much of it was complicated. Parts of it made me cry, parts of it made me smile.

I don't expect much more or much less in the future.

There are things I regret. First and foremost I regret that a large chunk of my tuition payment didn't go to the fine people who run The Daily Collegian, the organization that was responsible for most of my education.

Along the same lines, I regret not taking a greater interest in the subjects and teachers I enjoyed.

Finally, I regret not being able to keep all of the people I care about as close friends.

But the way I see it, these things are part of life. Sometimes you pay a lot of money for something that isn't worth much while the most enriching experience in your life doesn't cost you a penny.

Eventually, you've got to realize that you can only do so much in the time you have.

And even the best of friends can fade away.

My positive memories of Penn State, though, are numerous. There's Larry Johnson breaking through the Michigan State line and gaining his 2,000th yard. There's the realization three weeks later after his post-bowl game tirade that LJ had a lot to learn, just like the rest of us. There's Russ Rose, easily the best coach and possibly funniest man at this university, telling me to turn off the tape recorder so he can sound off about his underachieving team. There's the feeling of being surrounded by 110,000 fans as the Nittany Lions finish off the Cornhuskers on the field in front of you.

But by far the best feeling -- besides the feeling of loving and being loved by amazing people, which hopefully all of you understand couldn't be explained even if I tried -- was being allowed to write about all of these things for you to read.

Without ever knowing most of you, I have tried to connect with you so that I can enlighten and entertain.

Whether it worked for you I haven't the slightest idea. Your e-mail messages have been exactly as I expected: some positive, some negative, most in-between.

There may be one nagging question for anyone who has been a regular reader, and that's whether I dislike Joe Paterno.

I've been, in my short time here, uh, slightly critical of him.

The answer is, of course, no. Joe Paterno is still a man I look up to, despite how my perception of him has changed.

For all the mistakes I think he has made and for all the differences in opinion we may have, I still get the feeling that Joe Paterno shows up at work every day with the intention of improving the lives of each of his football players.

If I learned anything at Penn State, it's that trying to make a difference, be it large or small, through fighting a war or protesting one, is the most important thing you can do.

Call me idealistic and naïve, but doing that will turn you into a productive member of society who's also having the time of his or her life -- even if the college days are over.